Remember the classic Lays potato chip slogan: “Betcha can’t eat just one?” It was quite a claim, but for most people, it was accurate. I feel confident that Vampire Crawlers, an official card-based spin-off of Poncle’s Vampire Survivors developed by Nosebleed Interactive, could make a similar claim in its marketing. I doubt most people who play Vampire Crawlers will be able to do just one run and walk away. Instead, they’ll do one more, and then another. And then maybe one more. And then, they’ll suddenly realize it’s 2 am on a work night and go to bed. Right after you do one more quick run…
Launching April 21 on PC, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox, and Game Pass, Vampire Crawlers is a card-based rogue-like dungeon crawler set in the same universe as the auto-shooter main game that quickly became a hit back in 2023. So if you’ve played Survivors, you’ll spot a lot of familiar enemies, power-ups, abilities, and characters as you work your way through the game’s many hand-crafted dungeons. But Vampire Crawlers isn’t a top-down auto-shooter built around constant, never-ending action. Instead, Crawlers is a slower-paced adventure in which players explore various levels step-by-step via a first-person perspective while battling through groups of enemies using a deck of cards that they improve and expand during each dungeon run.
What the heck is Vampire Crawlers?
As you explore each of the game’s dungeon mazes, you level up by killing enemies and collecting crystals, like in the main game. This will unlock new cards. And as you explore more, you unlock ways to upgrade these cards or even combine them into more-powerful variants. All of these cards, many of which do damage but can also trigger other effects and bonuses, have a mana cost to play them. The cost ranges from zero to five or more, depending on various factors. You only have so much mana to use each “turn” during a battle. So you play a few cards, and once you’ve used up all your mana, played all your cards in your hand, or have no other moves, your turn is over. If there are still enemies standing, they get to attack, dealing an amount of damage that is listed above the group. This repeats until either you die or you kill all the enemies that make up that encounter.
During my first runs in Crawlers, I just grabbed cards randomly or based on how powerful (or cool) they seemed. I was running on vibes, basically. This let me get through some early levels, but soon, I was getting killed before I could reach the end, or the final boss would trounce me. The key is to think more strategically.
Sure, you can play a 1 mana cost card and then a zero mana cost card. But you should play the zero mana card first, then the one cost card after, as this will begin to build a combo. The higher the combo gets, the more powerful your cards become. For example, some of my favorite cards let me draw more cards. These types of cards become far more useful when you play them later in a combo, as they will draw even more cards than normal. The same is true for cards that deal damage or give you extra mana. Building big combos and knowing when to play specific cards, like ones that can give you armor and help you absorb a big wave of damage, is the key to getting deeper into Crawlers.
It’s a very different gameplay experience compared to the auto-shooter action of Survivors, but I think I enjoy it more. Don’t get me wrong, Vampire Survivors is still a magnificent game that will never be removed from my Steam Deck. But the slower-paced action and more methodical exploration and combo-making in Crawlers tickles parts of my brain that Survivors never did, and it’s just far easier to play for hours and hours. Or until my Steam Deck dies. Bonus points: Crawlers‘ slower-paced card gameplay makes it a perfect game to play while watching YouTube. A dangerous combo for me in particular.
Crawlers is just as chaotic and exciting as Survivors
At first, when I started playing Vampire Crawlers, I was concerned that this shift to a slower-paced dungeon-crawler with cards would mean I’d not get to experience my favorite part of Survivors. You know, that moment when a run is going so well that you become a powerful nuclear bomb of monster-killin’ energy, and the screen is filled with endless particles as dozens of sound effects play at once and waves of baddies disintegrate in seconds. Thankfully, that can happen in Crawlers too, and it’s just as wonderful. Again, the key is to build up combos. Eventually, I was turning my screen into a pixelated mess of flame, electricity, and more enemy-smiting goodness as dozens of foes got melted in seconds. It was amazing and felt so dam satisfying.
The music and sound effects, many heavily inspired by or directly ripped from the main game, helped make these big combo moments all the better. And yes, the slot-machine-like music that plays when opening a chest in Vampire Survivors is also heard when opening chests found in the dungeon.
Between dungeon runs, you return to a hub-like town which acts as the game’s main menu. Here is where you’ll take the gold you find during runs and receive for finishing dungeons and use it to upgrade your stats permanently, much like you do in Vampire Survivors. There are also different characters to pick and play as, offering different card bonuses and effects. And there’s even a strange tent you unlock later that contains powerful passive abilities that can greatly change how you play and build decks during runs.
Even after playing around 13 hours of Vampire Crawlers, mostly on my Steam Deck (where it ran perfectly), I am still making fresh discoveries and unlocking more parts of the game. Like the main game, this is not something you’ll just play for a few hours and leave behind. Vampire Survivors is a game that people will be playing for weeks, months, or more, trying to get through dungeons without taking damage, using every character, or finding every secret. At least, that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year.
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